Hard news - Jeffery Deaver [85]
Nestor and Boggs sat down at a rickety table. Boggs stared at his place mat, which was printed with puzzles and word games. He could figure out the visual ones— “What’s Wrong With This Picture?”—but he had trouble unscrambling letters to make words. He turned the place mat over and looked at the women at the bar.
The waitress came by and told them the kitchen was closing in ten minutes. They ordered four Black Jacks, neat, Bud chasers, and steaks and fries.
“That girl,” Nestor said. “Too bad you didn’t fuck her.”
“Who?”
“The one sprung you.”
“Naw, I told you, we was mostly friends.”
Nestor asked, “So?”
“Well, I only got out a few hours before you showed up.”
“It was me, the first thing I woulda done was get me some poontang.”
Boggs felt he was on the spot. He said, “Well, she had the baby there.”
The drinks arrived and they poured the shots down without saying anything because neither of them could think of a toast. Boggs wheezed and Nestor laughed. The big guy did his second shot right after.
“Don’t get any of that Inside, do you?” Nestor asked him.
“There was stuff you could get, depending on what you were willing to do or how much money you had. It was shit, though. Me, I didn’t get any care packages, so I had to settle. Sometimes I’d get me some watered vodka or a joint or two. Mostly I didn’t get nothing.”
“When I was Inside we had it easy. Fucking country club. A lot of dealers from L.A. There was so much shit.”
Boggs, dizzy from the liquor, asked, “You did time?”
“Fuck yeah, I was in. Did eighteen months in Obispo. Was fanfuckingtastic. You wanted blow, you got blow. You wanted sess, you got sess. You wanted fucking wine, you could get a good bottle of wine….”
Boggs was feeling the liquor sting his lips. They must’ve gotten windburned from the drive. “When were you in Obispo?”
“Four, five years ago about.”
“I didn’t know you’d done time.”
Nestor looked at him, surprised. “Hey, there’s probably a thing or two we don’t know about each other. Like I don’t know how long your dick is.”
Boggs said, “Long enough to keep a grin on her face for an hour or two.” His eyes slipped to the bar, where a round-faced young woman, with two-tone hair—blonde returning to black—sat with her elbow on the bar and her hand up, a cigarette aimed at the ceiling like a sixth finger. In front of her was a no-nonsense martini. The way she stared vacantly at the TV he figured the drink was the descendant of a long line of the same.
Nestor said, “You can have her. She don’t have tits.”
“Sure she does. She’s sitting hunched over.”
The food arrived and took both men’s attention. Boggs was eating but he’d found his appetite was gone. Maybe the steak was too rich. Maybe the burgers had filled him up or the alcohol had burned out his taste buds. He thought about Rune, about the little girl. He ate mechanically. He looked at the woman, who caught his eye and held it for a minute before she looked back at the TV. He thought a bit more then decided to finish eating. Maybe food would sober him up.
Boggs finished while Nestor was still halfway through.
“Man,” Boggs said, “that was a meal.”
Nestor looked at Boggs’s thin stomach. “You eat that way, how come you ain’t fat?”
“Dunno. I just never gain any. Not my doing.” Boggs’s voice faded as he stared again at the girl at the bar. This time she gave him a bit of a smile.
Nestor caught it. “Oh-oh.” He smiled. “Prison-boy gonna get laid.”
Boggs finished his beer. “You mind if I take the room for about an hour?”
“Shit, boy, it’ll take you five minutes, unless you jerked off every night inside the slammer.”
“Well, gimme an hour anyway. Maybe we’ll wanta do it twice.”
“Okeydokey,” Nestor said. “But get her butt out by one. I’m tired and I need some sleep.”
Boggs stood up and walked slowly toward the bar, trying to remember how to be cool and slick, trying to remember how to talk to women, trying to remember a lot of things.
chapter 27
BOGGS AND THE GIRL HAD BEEN GONE